


love has to be remade all the time, made new

by janie_tangerine



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Brienne is the Best, F/M, Idiots in Love, Jaime Lannister Has Issues, Loving Marriage, Married Life, Post-Canon, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, past j/c - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-02-07 06:55:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12835689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: Sharing your space and time with someone when you don’t have to hide it or when you’re not running for your life or trying to find a red haired maiden because you want to honor a promise to a dead woman who almost caused your demise after dying is – not what he’s adjusted to.It’s probably a good thing that Brienne seems to get it, because every time she gets somewhat exasperated at how he reacts to something she just shakes her head, tells him that whatever was that he’d have done with Cersei in the same situation isn’t what she’s somehow expecting now and leaves it at that, but at the same time it’s – he doesn’t want to say tiring because it’s not, but he feels like he’s treading completely new waters all the time and when you’ve thought most of your life that loving someone means that things go in a certain way, finding out that it can be completely different can and will make you question a lot of things, and it wasn’t what he had expected.





	love has to be remade all the time, made new

**Author's Note:**

> So, I'm apparently not done cleaning up the HD from old tumblr fics I never reposted, so have one I wrote sometime last year for the prompt _How about Jaime/Brienne and that Ursula LeGuin quote? "Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new."_ I have absolutely no idea how it went from THAT to this, but... yeah. Have some random tooth-rotting married fluff.
> 
> As usual: the title is reworked from the original quote this was inspired from and they don't belong to me, sadly, or this'd be in the S8 finale. /o\

No one told him it would be  _complicated_.

Then again,  _who_  was going to? Certainly not Cersei. Not when with  _her_  things seemed to be relatively uncomplicated up until he didn’t look like her mirror anymore, and then they  _were_ , but in a different way. A very much different way.

Fact is – he always was near Cersei somehow, since he took the white, but he never lived  _with_  her. He never shared her bed on a permanent basis. He never woke up next to her while being able to actually enjoy the moment. He never had to  _discuss_  with her when it came to – pretty much anything. What need there was for it anyway? Never mind that she was the one taking most of whatever decisions needed to be taken, and he was perfectly fine with it, because after all it’s not as if he felt like there was any need for it. It was the way it  _always_  had been, after all.

In retrospective, he thinks bitterly now, it makes a twisted kind of sense. Having a wife is not the same as having a lover, and having a wife who’ll want  _your_  opinion when running the household – even if it’s  _her_  household and she has the last word – is not the same as going along with everything your sister asks of you because after all you’re the same person and you want what she wants.

It’s not surprising that the first trivial argument he has with Brienne is  _exactly_  about that – she asks him what he thinks of some diatribe between farmers, he shrugs and tells her that  _Tarth is her island, does his opinion even matter_ , and Brienne just stares at him in a very, very  _disappointed_  way before saying,  _and I thought you actually cared_  before storming out of the room.

He followed her out.

Then she had found out that he honestly didn’t get what he did wrong in that scenario.

“Wench, it’s not that I don’t care,” he says, trying to put it into some kind of sensed way, “it’s – that it’s your decision?”

Brienne does not look impressed. “It might be,” she replies, “but perhaps, if I asked for your opinion it’s because I want to have it?”

“And does that even make a difference?”

At that, her face turns concerned rather than disappointed. “Well,  _yes_? It is my eventual decision, of course, but if I ask for a second opinion it’s because I want it. I don’t think you and I said those vows because we like to agree all the time, did we?”

“No,” he admits, and it’s true – they  _don’t_  agree all the time. They never did from the beginning, even if  _now_  they obviously do on most things. Most.

“Then why wouldn’t that make a difference?”

Jaime honestly doesn’t remember the last time he was left with no immediate reply to give in a long time, and he just stares at her for he doesn’t know how long before he shrugs and just goes for the truth. “It – well, it’s not like my previous mansions ever included giving advice on how to rule a realm or anything. I guess I didn’t think you would care either.”

Suddenly, the inch she has on him looks like a  _lot_  more than that.

Brienne tells him to come back to the solar. They both sit down, then she  _looks_  at him again.

“You know about my previous suitors.”

“I do. So?”

“I went through the trouble of asking them to beat me in a fight because I did  _not_  want to get married to someone who would just assume they would take over my father’s place and that I was a commodity. So why would you think that I would – be that person with  _you_?”

Her whole cheek is flushing as she speaks, and she’s not quite looking at him, but it’s an entirely clear question, isn’t it? Of course the first answer that comes to mind is  _I could never think you were that kind of person_ , but now he sees what she must have assumed, and – right. Seven hells. She has a point or ten.

“I wasn’t – assuming that,” he sighs. “Really. It’s not related to  _you_. I don’t think you would be like that at all. It’s – me, not you. Hells, I don’t even –” He stops, takes a deep breath, then figures he should just say it – if she could almost get hanged for  _him_  and kill bloody Lady Stoneheart so that she wouldn’t have to cut his own head, he can tell her straight. “I love you.”

Brienne  _then_  looks at him. She’s smiling ever so slightly now, but she also looks somehow worried. “I think I know that. That – doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want your opinion?”

He stares at her. She stares back.  _Something_  in the way she looks at him says that she might have understood what’s the problem.

“I think I wouldn’t – feel the way I do about you if you agreed with me about  _everything_  when we met,” she says. “Think about it. And I still want an answer to my previous question.”

He thinks,  _this is not how it’s supposed to go_.

Then he thinks,  _or maybe it is_.

What would he know?

He gives her the damned answer. She nods thoughtfully.

She actually did agree with him anyway, so it’s not as if he sways her or anything.

It’s not the last time it happens.

-–

Or better, it doesn’t happen over political disagreements.

He more or less does manage to wrap his head around that.

But there are  _so many_  things he hadn’t taken into account.

Sharing your space and time with someone when you don’t have to hide it or when you’re not running for your life or trying to find a red haired maiden because you want to honor a promise to a dead woman who almost caused your demise after dying is – not what he’s adjusted to.

It’s probably a good thing that Brienne seems to get it, because every time she gets somewhat exasperated at how he reacts to  _something_ she just shakes her head, tells him that whatever was that he’d have done with Cersei in the same situation isn’t what she’s somehow expecting now and leaves it at that, but at the same time it’s – he doesn’t want to say  _tiring_  because it’s not, but he feels like he’s treading completely new waters all the time and when you’ve thought most of your life that loving someone means that things go in a certain way, finding out that it can be completely different can and will make you question a lot of things, and it wasn’t what he had expected.

Not that he had expected Brienne to be the same as Cersei at any point whatsoever, but the more time passes the more he thinks,  _it couldn’t be more different_ , and there’s a little, nagging voice telling him,  _and what if you never told your brother the truth about Tysha?_

Most times his answer is that given how Cersei had taken the loss of his thrice damned right hand, things would have still gone sour.

And still, he had honestly thought you couldn’t love someone more wholly and absolutely than he had loved her, and now he thinks he might have been wrong, and –

Maybe he should just stop thinking about it, because what can he even do about it? A part of him is never  _not_  going to stop loving her even if he doesn’t miss her and he hasn’t grieved her in a long time, and that part will never somehow stop thinking that with Cersei it was easier –

Then he wakes up in the morning with Brienne’s arm draped around his waist and the sun filtering in through the windows and he doesn’t have to listen to that same part of him who says that he has to leave before anyone can see them, and he knows he won’t have to spend the day looking at her from the other side of the room and wishing he could take her husband’s place – because he  _is_  in that place – and that’s a perspective that changes everything, doesn’t it?

–-

One of those mornings – it’s been a year, and he’s still not entirely sure of how he’s managed to not make her regret her decisions, but he’s not actively thinking about that too often – she’s already up when he opens his eyes, which is a novelty since it tends to be the contrary most times.

“I – I have something to tell you,” she says, her voice sounding fairly neutral, but on the other side, her eyes tell and entire different story. Whatever this is, it’s of uttermost importance, or she wouldn’t be sending him a  _nervous_  look.

“All right.” He hopes it’s not bad news. He’s had enough of that for a lifetime or ten.

She breathes in. “My moon blood is late.”

For a moment, he doesn’t quite understand –

And  _then_  he thinks he does.

“How – how long?”

“Three weeks,” she says, still staring straight at him. “And I felt sick in the morning a few times in between. The maester says – it’s very likely that I am with child, after all.”

He opens his mouth. The first thing he thinks of saying is,  _do you want me to sleep in a different room_ , and then he realizes what he was about to ask, and then thinks,  _what in the seven hells is wrong with me?_

But he knows what’s wrong with him.

What’s wrong with him is that he’s had this conversation three times and all of those times, the next line coming just after  _I am with child_ , was  _we need to be more careful,_ followed by  _don’t come until after it’s born_ , and after then –

Well, it’s not as if he ever was a father to any of them, when it mattered.

“I was about to say something very unseemly,” he blurts out. Brienne moves closer, nodding once.

“I had guessed. More unseemly than usual?”

“I’d rather forget it even crossed my fucking mind,” he says.

“Then I’m not going to ask. But I think I should like  _your opinion_.” Now she’s almost smiling, and she’s not nervous anymore, and maybe he thinks he’s getting what’s the crux of the whole fucking difference.

He moves a hand to her stomach – it’s maybe just a tiny bit swollen, but no one would notice if they didn’t know beforehand.

“I reserve my rights to stop you from going after bandits  _yourself_ until he or she’s born, but other than that – hells, do you think I ever shared opinions when it came to – to the ones I had already?”

He tries not to think about them too often. He’s never even seen the infamous golden shroud people talked of when telling how Tommen died, and Myrcella is in Dorne and he hasn’t seen her in years, and she’s better off there.

“If you think I want to raise children on my own, you are mad,” Brienne declares a moment later. “Your  _opinions_  are required.”

“I think I can live with that,” he says, and he moves downwards to kiss her before she can say anything else, and he thinks that maybe this is complicated and he barely even knows what he’s doing –

But it’s entirely worth it.

 

End.


End file.
